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1986
). Essentially, education can be seen as a persuasion problem. To persuade
people to actively learn we must ensure that the audience is motivated as well as
able to learn. Interestingly, this can be seen both as a precondition for educational
tinkering, as well as aspects that tinkering can help realize.
An example of how tinkering could help to overcome lack of motivation for
learning would be a science museum targeting children or teenagers. A museum is a
less structured learning environment than a school, depending more on the internal
motivations of visitors than a traditional school environment does. To this effect,
an in house tinkering studio or tinkering installations can increase the motivation as
well as focus of visitors, in contrast to more passive, 'instructionist' setups.
To make the point about the importance of ability, let's contrast the above with
an academic research context. Apart from differing technical abilities, graduate and
doctoral students may have different personality and psychological profiles, which
can affect tinkering success in opposing ways.
Take imaginary student A, with a more sensing personality. The student thinks
very much in terms of concrete products or pieces, whether more technical or more
artistic, and has a clear idea early in the process what needs to be made. A pitfall
for this student however, is that tinkering implies one to be able to change direction,
when at a conceptual or practical dead end—moreover, sometimes one needs to
'kill their darling' for such change in direction to take effect. A strong practical and
perceptual attitude can in fact limit the reflective abilities. Understanding what one
aims to achieve conceptually or how what was just discovered impacts one's abstract
idea or understanding, is key in a constructionist tinkering approach. Mentoring such
a student would be much more focused on stimulating reflection through questioning
by instructors or peers and outsiders.
However, the opposite could occur also. Student B can be strong in terms of
abstract and theoretical thinking, thereby limiting the ability to become concrete and
start creating or changing a product. This could be related to a fear of 'making the
wrong choice', either in terms of failing to implement the project aims correctly, or
more commonly, the fear of not having chosen the optimal concept to do so. For
student B, mentoring strategies could address this by clarifying that it is fine to fail
quickly and readjust, as opposed to not trying at all.
Observation 6
For tinkering to be successful as a learning strategy, non-technical
psychological factors such as personality, motivation and ability must be taken
into account. Different motivational and ability profiles could warrant opposing
mentoring strategies.
8.6
The Future of Tinkering in Scientific Education
In this chapter, we explored tinkering as a mode of education from different perspec-
tives. Departing from an etymological view, we moved on to
what
can be learned from
tinkering. Focusing next on contexts
where
tinkering can be a valid approach, we
mentioned in particular academic research education and emerging worlds. Lastly,
